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WHAT IS THE ISSUE

  • There is a growing epidemic with the need for children to have a strong educational foundation.

  • A lot of our children are suffering from weak educational foundations, especially in literacy and math.

  • Some of the issues that contribute to our children succumbing to this growing epidemic are based on the social and economic factors that they may face.

  • The No Rest Until Success Foundation sees the need for our children to have a strong educational foundation and we want to do our part.

 Let’s take a more in-depth look

Elementary students in the United States lack strong reading and writing skills. According to Casbergue (2014), not all U.S. early literacy instruction is effective. Particularly in the early grades, very little time is devoted to teaching broad knowledge and vocabulary that will later make reading understandable and provide appealing topics to write on when prompted (Dubin, 2012).

 

According to Ladda and Jacobs (2015), millions of adults in the United States currently have deficient literacy skills. If these adults had a strong literacy background from early childhood, they would have more developed literacy skills in adulthood. This ongoing challenge is likely connected to students’ social and economic status and the impact of these on their daily environment. According to Rasinski (2017), “Poverty has repeatedly been shown to be one of the most powerful correlates to reading difficulty” (p. 519). Children living in poverty are more likely to struggle because they lack parents who are able to practice reading strategies at home and may not have access to resources like books (Rasinski, 2017 p. 519). The lack of parental support and resources places further pressure on schools to build literacy skills in early childhood when children may not have a reading-rich environment at home.

 

When students struggle with literacy in upper grades, it is usually due to the fact that they did not develop these skills in their early childhood years (Rasinski, 2017, p. 520). Literacy problems, which again, can involve both reading and writing, can even follow students into their college years.

 

 According to Haynes (as cited in Ladda & Jacobs, 2015), “About 40 percent of first-year college students need remediation courses before they can begin credit-bearing courses in college” (p.5).

 

According to Wolpert (2018), "Based on placement tests, a staggering 60 percent of U.S. students who enter community colleges are not qualified to take a college mathematics course, even though they have graduated high school. "If students had a strong mathematics foundation, they wouldn’t struggle in college with math."

References 

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Casbergue, R. M. (2017). Ready for kindergarten? Rethinking early literacy in the common core era. The Reading Teacher,

70(6),643-648. doi:10.1002/trtr.1569
 

Dubin, J. (2012). More than words: An early grades reading program builds skills and knowledge. American Educator, 36(3), 34. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ986685

 

Ladda, S., & Jacobs, M. (2015). The ABCs of literacy: Interdisciplinary is key. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 86(8), 5-7. doi:10.1080/07303084.2015.1076642

 

Rasinski, T. V. (2017). Readers who struggle: Why many struggles and a modest proposal for improving their reading. The Reading Teacher, 70(5), 519-524. doi:10.1002/trtr.1533

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Wolpert, Stuart. (2018, October 15). Why So Many U.S. Students aren’t learning Nath? Retrieved December 20, 2019, from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/why-so-many-u-s-students-arent-learning-mathfbclid=IwAR3BL0TIXMNNaIkEYrP4qPqC v5kmnHDOP96WTkcL-3WgfAMWB8CQbr0QgEA.

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